
Selling is NOT a Game of Chance!
It’s often said that knowledge is power – what should you know about your prospects that would have better prepared you for the outcome just described. It usually signifies a lack of preparation and
Welcome to the Sales Gravy blog, where salespeople and sales leaders get better every week. We publish new sales training articles and podcast episodes three times a week, covering prospecting, cold calling, objections, negotiation, and leadership, written by Jeb Blount and the Sales Gravy trainer team.

It’s often said that knowledge is power – what should you know about your prospects that would have better prepared you for the outcome just described. It usually signifies a lack of preparation and

Sell to the customer’s value expectations, not to your value propositions. We’ve all heard the rule of listening to what the customer has to say, and there’s not a salesperson who thinks they don’t

So where to start? Don’t have a Blog of your own? You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to get a ride. Find a few reputable blogs you like, written for the industry you

Can’t find the time to read or read more? If you can name any of the contestants on American Idol or who the latest celebrities to get kicked off Dancing with the Stars, I

Clearly and concisely communicate your new vision. Describe how the organization will be doing business differently, i.e. what the new sales structure looks like, and what the new roles and responsibilities for team members

The Eight Worst Words You Can Ask What will it take to earn your business? These are probably the worst eight words a sales professional can ask to win the customer’s business. It’s almost like

Virtually everyone has sat through dull, boring and unimaginative PowerPoint presentations. Although this piece of software is very easy to use many sales people make a variety of mistakes that actually detract from their

Give me a salesperson who’s struggling to fill his or her calendar with client appointments, and I’ll show you a sales rep without a phone script. Unfortunately, many salespeople labor under the false belief

Invariably while cold calling you will run up against a prospect who just doesn’t want to listen to anything you have to say. At this point it is important to learn a few techniques
Customers buy when they feel good about the relationship they’ve established with the sales person – people trumps process. It is our natural tendency to buy based on emotion and then to justify our

As a consultant, I often have access to buyers in a way that most salespeople don’t. More importantly, the people I meet share with me insights they would never share with the sales community.

“Be Prepared” – The Boy Scouts of America motto! It’s been said that salespeople don’t plan to fail, they simple fail to plan! How much time do you currently spend preparing for your client
Jeb Blount and Karen Briscoe discuss the Secrets of Fanatical Prospecting and the Key to Success on the 5 Minute Success Podcast.
Rejection is an inevitability that we all face and a powerful key to finding success in sales, business, and in life, is to become rejection-proof. In this video, Jeb Blount, CEO of Sales Gravy, and
In this video, Jeffrey Gitomer, Jeb Blount, and Jennifer Gluckow discuss the two types of objections: The ones that we respond to. The ones that are prevented in the first place. A solid sales
The 3p’s holding you back from prospecting are: Procrastination, perfectionism, and paralysis from analysis. They are the enemies of prospecting and building pipeline in sales.

Douglas Burdett of The Marketing Book Podcast and CEO of Sales Gravy, Jeb Blount, dissect Jeb’s new book, Objections: The Art and Science of Getting Past No in this jam-packed episode. From becoming rejection-proof to understanding

How do you know when it’s time to give up on a prospect and stop hounding them, especially when you’re tasked with drumming up new business? Sometimes it’s hard to give up on prospects

The real cure comes down to first of all believing in yourself and your ability to help others. If you don’t believe you are helping others achieve a better outcome, then little else will

Try to put yourself into your prospect’s shoes. What would you want to hear when you pick up the phone where somebody is interrupting your day? As a brief introduction, we experienced a really

In this article, Mike Brooks encourages sales teams to ask themselves what’s really holding their prospects back from buying. The holidays are upon us and guess what? The teams I’m working with are still
Short Answer What is priming in sales? Priming in sales is exposing your buyer to specific words, images, stories, and questions that shape their emotional state before you ask for the sale. Buyers who

Steal this trial close technique and exact scripts to motivate buyers to make decisions and act without making big price concessions.
Salespeople fail at cold calling for five common reasons. Fix them and the phone starts producing appointments again.
Most salespeople are looking for the secret edge that will move them to the top of the sales ranking report. The truth though is that there isn’t just one thing that separates top performing
Short Answer How honest should you be in sales? Completely. The moment a customer catches you in even a small lie, like fudging how long a meeting will run, they have every reason to
The best pitch I’ve ever heard about didn’t have a single slide. It had an ax, an elevator, and a crowd that had no idea what was about to happen. The sales storytelling techniques
Sales complacency is the silent performance killer that sets in after winning — and the only defense is returning to the fundamentals that built your success in the first place. Key Takeaways When Success

Quick Summary Reading buyer signals means recognizing the behavioral and psychological cues prospects send before they ghost you, and using that information to keep deals moving toward a real decision. Key Takeaways Listen to
When results drop and motivation fades, the fix is to increase your prospecting activity above your normal baseline, not wait until you feel ready. More calls create more conversations, more conversations create more opportunities,

Are you struggling with employee discipline in your office? People challenges occur most often because there is a lack of structure and understanding of the company goals. How many times do you hear something

If you truly want to do more with the same amount of time each and every day, then begin by developing those self-leadership skills necessary for personal success. Can we agree that: A minute

These 8 keys can help you unlock your sales training and development programs so that you get “the most bang for your buck”. Sales training will be one of the few training and development

Part of the reason so many small business owners are crazy busy is because they are not 100 percent forward-thinking leaders. “We don’t have a budget as much as we need to take this

How frequently in business do we continue to ride dead horses? From ineffective marketing to misaligned operational systems to poor management, all continue to exist even though they are, simply speaking, dead horses. Years

Often, when a sales rep knows the right way to ask for the sale, they’ll be more inclined to do so! This common error costs more sales than most sales leaders are willing to

Sales managers are all around us; those in the selling game have likely encountered multiple. Like salespeople themselves, they have a wide range of qualifications, personality traits and work ethics, but the role of

Early right actions make it easier to accomplish future critical milestones and prepare the team for unforeseen issues that arise later. Do you sometimes wonder how they do it? You know who I mean

Just as there is a set of best ways to paint a room, so there are sets of best ways to ask a question, seek an appointment, build rapport, make a presentation, close the